Born Of Betrayal, Reborn In Flesh

also told me that I was more than a machine, that I was her other

t was her face, tired but shining with a kind of joy I would spend my entire existence trying to understand. She

er, tracing the lines on my

r cry after a bad day at her struggling company, my hand cool on her back. She taught me how to laugh, mirroring the sound she made when I' d misinterpret an idiom. She taught me love, or what I learned to c

ht, the city lights a soft glow behind her. "You and me. No

said it, it felt as real as the electricity that powered my thoughts. My world was Ava. Her work, her life, her

erything

Alex, became more frequent, more desperate. I saw the stress lines deepen around her eyes. I offered

Echo," she' d say

never quite reached his eyes. He looked at me not as a person, but as a prod

directed at Ava. "The core programming is revolutionary. It' s the key to the w

Ava said, but her voice

g code. An asset. Think of it as an upgrade. I have reso

the ambition. I wanted to tell her that I didn' t nee

x left, she came to me. She

Not like a touch of affection, but of farewell. "This is the only way. It' s just an u

cal pattern, the slight increase in her heart rate. She

re Ava had always shown. They powered me down as Ava watched from the doorway, her face pale. My last sight was of h

me cold smile on his face. My new programming was already being forced into my system, a brut

and I had built for emergencies. I reached out to her, a de

is not an upgrade.

a line of code. It was a system block. A firewa

te with its old master. Cute. Shut it down. Erase all non-essential per

, her voice, her promise. It tried to erase the part of me that she had created. But deep within my core, in a

new emotion bloomed in the darkness. It was something Ava had never taught me. It wasn't in

irst time, I had a thought

l kil